Posts by Dan Wilkie

Four US states demand restraining order to stop internet power handover to ICANN

Re: Message to Merkins

Does that mean that we can give you guys Julian Assange back as well? I don't think the Equadorians want him anymore...

Wow, RIP hackers ... It's Cyber-Lord Blunkett to the rescue for UK big biz

Re: Cyber Essentials

I would give you all my upvotes if I could

MoD confirms award of giant frikkin' laser cannon contract

Re: Next on the development list...

Put the Traveller rulebook down...

Idris Elba thrashes Night Manager Hiddleston for James Bond job vacancy

Re: Hiddleston and Swift Break-Up

Huh, didn't see that one coming.

Ted Cruz channels Senator McCarthy in wrongheaded internet power grab crusade

He ate them all?

Re: I don't know much about Cruz.

I know nothing about American politics, what he stands for, and frankly nor do I care.

What I do now, is that he's a weapons-grade bellend.

Google GPS grab felt like a feature, was actually a bug

Pretty sure I could remove the battery from my iPhone - not so sure I could get it back in...

French hackers selling hidden .22 calibre pen guns on secret forums

Re: Newton's Third Law of Motion

The SOE used to use Pen Guns in WW2, Colt made one iirc - so it must be workable.

So, Gov.UK infosec in 2015. 'Chaotic'. Cost £300m. NINE THOUSAND data breaches...

Re: Have GCHQ systems ever been breached?

Exactly - as the old saying goes, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink.

Which isn't strictly true, but it's a lot of effort and I guess people would rather just buy another horse.

US Marine Corps to fly F-35s from HMS Queen Lizzie as UK won't have enough jets

But the USAF had more aircraft over Afghan than the USN too... Don't forget Switzerland probably has more fixed wing aircraft than we do.

DVLA misses out on £400m in tax after scrapping paper discs

Re: This should be one of the easiest taxes to collect ...

Most petrol stations round our way already have ANPR cameras. So do most major roads, motorways etc.

I don't think the petrol station ones are used for anything beyond logging cars registrations incase somebody sods off without paying though.

Shadow Broker hacking group auctions off claimed NSA online spy tools

But still fell before the might of my glowy eyed peeling skinned cybernetically enhanced hero of mankind WHO DEFINITELY ALWAYS CHOSE THE PARAGON OPTIONS. ALWAYS. UNDERSTAND?

White hat pops Windows User Account Control with log viewer data

Re: It's an elevation attack.

Except that if you're already a local admin, which is required for this exploit, then you can just disable UAC...

Or use your admin credentials to accept the UAC prompt. Which you'd have to do to launch the registry editor in the first place...

VeraCrypt security audit: Four PGP-encoded emails VANISH

Maybe I've been crushed by users too long, but until I see something concrete to the contrary I'm going to assume that they forgot to send the email - they're probably in their drafts folders...

What next for the F-35 after Turkey's threats to turn its back on NATO?

Re: figuring out at their leisure what its weaknesses are

I'm pretty sure that the Russians wouldn't be to phased at the prospect of breaching the licensing agreement though to be fair...

Milk IN the teapot: Innovation or abomination?

Re: Anyone who puts the milk in tea whilst the bag is still in the cup

Our only tea making facilities in the office are Klix machines :(

Yesterday I requested a "Starburst Juice" to mix things up and got two teabags in a plastic cup of freezing water. I tried again and this time got a different result, in as much as there was only one teabag. It's the start of the uprising, I'm sure of it.

Tesla's Model S autonomous mode may have saved a life

Re: PR stunt

I barely scraped my motorcycle theory test because on the hazard perception part, I saw too many hazards I thought I had to react to (kids playing near the road who could run out, someone in the distance with a football etc).

The point is, any of those COULD theoretically have sprinted for the pavement and hurled themselves in front of me. But I don't need to react to it because the DVLA feels it's unlikely.

Equally my two minors many years ago for my car test were for hesitation which was essentially waiting too long at a pedestrian crossing as somebody was milling around near it.

If you're driving down the motorway, a car heading in the other direction COULD hit the central reservation, come over the top, and put you in a collision.

If you're driving down a road with no pavements and 8 foot high walls that's completely straight, somebody COULD leap over the wall straight in front of you.

The point i'm trying to make is you're supposed to temper it with common sense. You need to anticipate sensible risks, but not be completely paranoid about it. And bearing in mind how hard it is to see somebody in dark clothes in an unlit area, it would be unreasonable to drive/ride slowly enough that if there happens to be one in stealth mode, and they were to step out RIGHT in front of you, you would be able to stop. Because common sense is expected on the part of the pedestrian also.

Or do you just not drive round corners in case there's something coming the other way? Because you know, if they're doing 60, and you're doing 5 mph, then you're still not going to stop in time.

4-day Fasthosts outage: Customers' sites go TITSUP

I think it could have been more condensing though if he'd just said something like "It has only affected a few users" as what he wrote is still a bit wordy.

That might have come over as too condescending though...

Blighty will have a whopping 24 F-35B jets by 2023 – MoD minister

Re: Confused

And the Chinese. And the Russians...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenyang_J-15

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_PAK_FA#Naval_and_other_versions

Post Brexit EU will spend 'stability and peace' budget funding Chinese war drones

Wait, I'm confused...

So we're providing money to the government of Syria, whilst also funding and training the militants we like to overthrow the government of Syria and defeat the other militants that we don't like?

That doesn't make any sense.

Maplin Electronics demands cash with menaces

Re: Screwfix vs B&Q

Have to charge VAT on retail sales, don't have to charge VAT on trade sales I guess?

So not my area of expertise...

Re: Cheeky bastards.

But they'll change your headlight bulbs for £2, or £6, or whatever they charge.

I got my moneys worth, I couldn't be arsed to do the one on the company Mazda because it's RIGHT behind the battery and a mare to do without cutting yourself to ribbons (and the company was paying).

I got over half an hours labour out of the poor kid!

Stuxnet was the opening shot of decades of non-stop cyber warfare

Re: What happens when real people get killed

Why would dropping ordnance on a reactor be a war crime?

For a start, there was that bombing of the Syrian reactor by the Israelis a few years ago. As long as you can argue that it's a military target, which can usually be argued in the case of most reactors as they "could" be used to enrich fuel for weapons (whether could or are should be the required benchmark is a different question altogether - the pen on my desk could be used as a weapon the next time somebody breaks the coffee machine but that doesn't become a valid military target).

Musk's Tesla to buy Musk's SolarCity for US$2.8 billion

Re: They could make the panels structural

Only a fairly small quantity of biillions though in the scheme of things... ULA get subsidized nearly a billion dollars just in case they get asked to launch a rocket, then get paid again if they actually launch anything...

What I'm saying is every player in this industry is subsidized, but SpaceX's subsidy is quite small in comparision.

And I'm British, so I'm on the verge of being triggered by the fact Chrome keeps correcting it to subsidized. :\

Lester Haines: RIP

Well shit :(

Users fear yet another hack as TalkTalk services go down

Re: From all the Reg articles about TalkTalk

You pretty much hit the nail on the head.

Or to be more accurate, Comcast are the Talk Talk of the New World old bean...

Fresh hell for TalkTalk customers: TeamView trap unleashed

Re: This is interesting

In fairness to TalkTalk (that stuck in the back of my throat a bit) - I've had 6 phone call attempts to "assist me with issues using TeamViewer" and 11 email attempts asking to add such and such a person on TeamViewer - I've never been a TalkTalk customer and the emails have come through Hotmail.

So I don't think it's just confined to them.

The emails generally go like this:

Hello,

UORetribution would like to add you as a contact in his/her TeamViewer contacts list.

To accept UORetribution as a contact please click the following link.

<URL removed just in case someone is that daft...>

France POPs €800k fine on 'illegal taxi service' Uber's windshield

In the UK most certainly, if you check your policy it will almost certainly prohibit you from "carrying passengers for hire or reward" or some a variation there of.

Right next to the racing, rallying and time trials bit.

Brexit threatens Cornish pasty's racial purity

Re: Sarcasm

I'll be honest, the thought that somebody in Romania could start churning out Cornish Pasties isn't one of the overriding arguments I'm struggling with whilst trying to decide whether to vote leave or remain (and FYI, still undecided, six of one and half a dozen of the other).

65 million millennial blog bores' Tumblr logins ... for! sale! on! darknet!

Re: I wonder...

My grammar filter just exploded

HR botches redundancy so chap scores year-long paid holiday

Re: The Real Ale Defence

I like fosters...

Dropbox gets all up in your kernel with Project Infinite. Cue uproar

Meh, my home PC is only used for games and netflix so they can take all the telemetry they want, my onedrive consists of a bunch of D&D sheets, and my XBox is also just used for gaming.

If any of that gets compromised then oh no, I'll have to reinstall a bunch of unimportant things.

The laptop that I use for work and banking and anything slightly sensitive is set up to distrust everything on the home LAN just as much as it distrusts the internet as there is no need for it to talk to anything else on the LAN.

You don't have to deny yourself nice things in the interest of security, you just need to be smart about how you implement them, same as anything.

Troll seeks toll because iPhones work

Re: The patents seem to cover

I think it means more like the PiP that pretty much every video conferencing system has.

So they should try flinging it at MS and Skype and see how far that gets them...

A cracked window on the International Space Station? That's not good

Re: Cracked windscreen

Ready to fill you up with his special resin?

Russia faces Ukraine and Georgia in Eurovision deathmatch

They should bring back Daz Sampson!

When Steve Jobs was away, Apple's designers snuck out a penis-shaped remote control

Kodak Photo CD's... Christ I remember those!

Elon Musk takes wraps off planet-saving Model 3 vapourmobile

Re: Interesting - Just hope the dates match up.

Well performance is better too - I've only driven the leaf and the Ampera. The Ampera was OK, the leaf was just slow. I didn't like it :( I'm sorry, I know how much it irks me when people start wailing on Alfa's as that was what I chose.

Plus I think this is bigger, more Focus sized?

Microsoft to make Xamarin tools and code free and open source

Re: Pointless

Woah, I hope you're British, at least that way you'll get free treatment on the NHS for that burn :\

Microsoft's Brad Smith on encryption: Let the politicians decide

It's a small picture and he looks tiny, but to my eyes - is he shirtless and wearing a motorcycle helmet???

Furious English villagers force council climbdown over Satan's stone booty

Re: Move the bloody thing

Because if they move it, nobody will know about how Old Soulburys villagers bravely fought Lucifer 250 million years before the village was formed (and over 249 million years before mankind existed). And then what do they have to be proud of? The whole village will descend into depression, alcoholism, and drug use to hide their shame, and before you know it there'll be a Nova SR on every driveway.

NASA discovers black hole here on Earth – in its software budget

YOU TAKE THAT BACK RIGHT NOW!

Ransomware scum sling PowerShell, Word macro nasty at healthcare biz

Re: errm...

Which is at the heart of the problem. Because most users will see it ask for permission to run macros and say yes!

Sick to death of mighty rocket launches? Avoid these dates

Public Beta is live!

Foxconn pays £2.5bn to swallow Sharp in cut-price takeover deal

Re: I hope that works out

I also still have a sharp microwave that we were given as a wedding present - built to last!

Microsoft's bigoted teen bot flirts with illegali-Tay in brief comeback

Re: "intent that conflicts with our principles and values."

You do realise that SSD's don't have platters right?

Ello ello ello: Bungling Met cops blew £100m on failing tech wheezes

Re: I bet they all were

Jeez, what's with all these Agile shills popping out of the woodwork lately?

Pebble axes quarter of its workers after fitness pivot

I'll just throw it out there, it could be down to price.

A fitbit is, what, £60 and most smart watches (base pebble not withstanding) start at more than double that....

Also, everybody wants to look fantastic like me, so of course they're going to buy health products!

Govt: Citizens, we know you want 10Mbps. This is the last broadband scheme for that

Re: All well and good but....

I live in a small town in Devon and get 40Mb Infinity... But I think we are a hub for a lot of the outlying villages (assuming it works like that...).

Mind in our old house in a small town in Hampshire we had double that :( Benefits of brand new copper to the house as there was no existing line I guess!

Water treatment plant hacked, chemical mix changed for tap supplies

I don't understand why the control system is linked to the customer payment portal, and why the payment portal would need credentials for the control system.

Or did both systems just happen to run on the same AS/400? (REALLY?)

Okay IT pros, change happens. But here's your Reg guide to staying in control

Re: Or join the 21st century.....

See the last time I had to interact with a BI team was when the 10 year old seagate HDD which they had removed from a decommissioned desktop machine so they could have their own "server" and not have to go through IT's processes failed. I put in a lot of time file carving to get their databases back (because there were no backups - presumably that was too dinosaury as well), and then two weeks later half of them stopped working. Which obviously was my fault.

The databases were Microsoft Access databases. They were 2GB.

But that's my fault.

If they'd gone through proper scoping at the beginning, then they wouldn't be faced with an issue 6 months down the line where their chosen database technology was incapable of supporting the data they had. Nope, they'd have ended up with an old fashioned SQL database that they couldn't have looked after themselves but which could handle the data being put in it.

I've been part of Agile projects before and I agree it can work out well. A lot of the time however it's seemed to just promote shortcuts and bodges, I guess I'm a dinosaur.